AITE case follows pattern

Published 11:11 pm, Thursday, September 3, 2015

STAMFORD — A female AITE teacher’s attempts to prevent a male former colleague who she said sexually harassed her and a student from returning to the school mark the fourth time sexual misconduct accusations have come to light in the past year, casting doubt on the district’s handling of such cases.

Last month, a former student gave a victim-impact statement at the sentencing of Glenn Mishuck, an English teacher at Stamford High School in the 1990s, who was convicted of sexually abusing a student while a teacher in Fairfield. The student claimed she was abused by Mishuck when she was his student in Stamford. In April, The Advocate discovered an agreement that allowed another Stamford High teacher facing accusations of inappropriate conduct with a student to leave the district with a letter of recommendation. And a little more than a year ago, yet another Stamford High teacher was charged with having sex with a student over the course of a year.

Now, the female AITE teacher’s emails to top administrators, the school board and even the mayor to try to prevent the male teacher from returning to her school point to a failure by the district’s human resources department: to keep proper records.

The HR department has undergone massive turnover in the past seven years, which may explain why no one in the district seemed to know that the male AITE teacher had a history when he was accused of sexually harassing a student in the 2013-14 school year.

That history was significant. After the female teacher made a formal complaint to human resources about him in 2008, when she says she was being harassed by him, he was suspended and ordered to undergo training.

The HR department’s lack of knowledge persisted despite the existence of an official letter attesting to the complaints, the female teacher wrote. The letter was not in her file, for unknown reasons. After she reached out to Stephen Falcone, the district’s current director of human resources, he had to request a copy of the letter from the AITE administration.

But it is clear that failures of proper documentation have become part and parcel of the sexual misconduct allegations that have come to light in the district over the past year.

Former Stamford teacher Mishuck’s personnel records, provided by the district, show only one blemish: that Mishuck was suspended in 2002. No letter explaining the rationale for the suspension was included in Mishuck’s file, and the records that are there present conflicting information regarding the length of the suspension. In one place, it’s given as two days, and in another it is described as four.

When Stamford High teacher Danielle Watkins had sex repeatedly with one of her students during the 2013-14 school year, no members of the school’s staff or administration reported their suspicions to the state Department of Children and Families. The investigation that followed cited, among other failures, the district’s poor record keeping, saying that the school system had been unable to provide documentation that it had adequately trained staff in their responsibilities as mandated reporters.

The turnover at the district’s human resources office has been high, with four human resources directors in the past seven years. Falcone, hired in December 2013, replaced Faye Rutolo, who had held the post since the start of the 2011-12 school year. Rutolo’s predecessor, Thomas Danehy, ran the office for just over a year. Danehy replaced Denise Gagne, who took the post in fall 2008.

The female teacher at AITE would have filed her complaint to Carlton Moody, Gagne’s predecessor.

District spokeswoman Sharon Beadle declined to discuss the AITE matter Thursday, saying that the district as a rule does not comment on personnel issues. Falcone was not made available to discuss his office’s record keeping.

Requests for the personnel file for the male teacher accused of sexual harrasment were referred to the city’s legal department, which was still processing the request Thursday.

Still, the AITE allegations differ from the rest on at least one key point: the state’s Department of Children and Families was alerted.

A source close to the matter said Wednesday that the state agency had been called during the 2013-14 school year after allegations against the male teacher were made by the student. The emails also indicated that the Stamford Police Department had conducted an investigation into the allegations of student harassment.

The police said Thursday that they have to review their records before commenting on any investigation.